SHORTS AIRCRAFT SINCE 1900

From the first spherical balloons made by Eustace and Oswald Short after visiting the Paris Exhibition in 1900, the author traces the brothers' progress as engineers to the Aero Club till Wilbur Wright's arrival in France in 1908 and their consequent change-over from balloons to aeroplanes — a decision heartily endorsed by their gifted eldest brother Horace, who joined them to set up the world's first aircraft production line.

Their rapid expansion as aircraft suppliers to the Royal Navy and their notable progress with deck - launching, folding wings, buoyancy bags, sprung floats and the first successful torpedo-carrying seaplane led to enormous production of the famous Short Type 184 at Rochester and elsewhere during World War I.

After Horace's death in 1917, Oswald pioneered stressed-skin duralumin construction in a form which has lasted almost unchanged to the present day. 

Unbuilt projects are fully treated in their proper context and the post - 1945 story of Rochester's last days and Northern Ireland's new industry is carried right up to the current service of the Belfast and Skyvan.

More than half the photographs have never been published before and nine Appendices list all Shorts' constructor's numbers, serials and registration marks. The book contains specifications for all Short types and variants, and complete lists to date of type designations and preliminary designs. Its authenticity is guaranteed by the author's tree access to both the company's archives and the memoirs and log-books of the late John Lankester Parker, O.B.E., and is endorsed by Mr Oswald Short himself.